A Franklin County jury has handed down one of the largest verdicts in a Central Ohio business dispute in recent years.

A Common Pleas Court jury last month awarded $12.2 million to two plaintiffs suing the former owner of Martin Designs Inc., a maker of low-cost licensed stationery products. The creditors of the defunct company and investors who bought it in 2003 had sued Martin L. Myers, accusing him of misrepresenting the condition of Martin Designs when he sold it to them for $23.5 million, including $10 million in cash. They also alleged he was working on a subsequent business idea while he was still employed there.

Myers founded Martin Designs in 2000 to sell notebooks and other products emblazoned with Nickelodeon characters, NASCAR images and other licensed content through drugstores and retail chains. He sold the business in 2003 to MD Acquisition LLC, led by New York private equity investor CM Equity Partners. Myers then left the Ashland-based company in 2005 to co-found Pet Brands Inc., a Columbus business selling licensed pet products.

Martin Designs went out of business in 2008 after a line of Chinese-made SpongeBob SquarePants notebooks it was selling was recalled because the spiral binding contained high levels of lead.

The plaintiffs won on all claims of breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation in the trial, which lasted five weeks. They alleged Myers lied about his inventory being in “good and marketable condition” at the time of the sale and claimed he worked on the idea for Pet Brands on company time while reneging on an agreement that any new business ideas would stay in-house.

Greg Melick, the head of Luper Neidenthal & Logan LPA’s litigation department who coordinated the Columbus law firm’s case with lead counsel David Scott, said they’ll now go after Myers’ majority stake in Pet Brands to recover the award. According to court documents, Pet Brands had $8.5 million in gross income on $43 million in revenue in 2009.